May Fourth Movement

May Fourth Movement

(1919), first mass movement in modern Chinese history. On May 4, about 5,000 university students in Beijing protested the Versailles Conference (Apr. 28, 1919) awarding Japan the former German leasehold of KiaochowKiaochowor Jiaozhou, former German territory, area c.200 sq mi (520 sq km), along the southern coast of Shandong prov., China. Its administrative center was the city of Qingdao. Germany leased Kiaochow in 1898 for 99 years, but in 1914 Japan seized it......Click the link for more information. (Jiaozhou), Shandong prov. Demonstrations and strikes spread to Shanghai, and a nationwide boycott of Japanese goods followed. The May Fourth Movement began a patriotic outburst of new urban intellectuals against foreign imperialists and warlordswarlord,in modern Chinese history, autonomous regional military commander. In the political chaos following the death (1916) of republican China's first president and commander in chief, Yüan Shih-kai, central authority fell to the provincial military governors and.....Click the link for more information.. Intellectuals identified the political establishment with China's failure in the modern era, and hundreds of new periodicals published attacks on Chinese traditions, turning to foreign ideas and ideologies. The movement split into leftist and liberal wings. The latter advocated gradual cultural reform as exemplified by Hu ShihHu Shih, 1891–1962, Chinese philosopher and essayist, leading liberal intellectual in the May Fourth Movement (1917–23). He studied under John Dewey at Columbia Univ., becoming a lifelong advocate of pragmatic evolutionary change......Click the link for more information. who interpreted the pragmatism of John Dewey, while leftists like Chen DuxiuChen Duxiuor Ch'en Tu-hsiu, 1879–1942, Chinese educator and Communist party leader. He was active in the republican revolution of 1911 and was forced to flee to Japan after taking part in the abortive "second revolution" of 1913 against Yüan Shih-kai......Click the link for more information. and Li DazhaoLi Dazhao, 1888–1927, professor of history and librarian at Beijing Univ., cofounder of the Chinese Communist party with Chen Duxiu. He was the first important Chinese intellectual to support the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia......Click the link for more information. introduced Marxism and advocated political action. The movement also popularized vernacular literature, promoted political participation by women, and educational reforms.

Bibliography

See Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (2d ed. 1964); V. Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May 4th Movement of 1919 (1986).

May Fourth Movement

a mass anti-imperialist movement in China in May and June 1919.

Influenced by the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the May Fourth’ Movement developed in response to the decision of the Paris Peace Conference not to return to China the former German concessions in Shantung, which had been captured by the Japanese. It began on May 4,1919, in Peking, where students demonstrated against the decision and the betrayal of Chinese national interests by the venal leaders of the Peking government. The police arrested several dozen demonstrators; the students of Peking responded the following day by boycotting classes and declaring a strike.

The action of the students in Peking was supported by students in other cities, and in early June workers, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the nationalist bourgeoisie joined the struggle. The principal center of the movement shifted from Peking to Shanghai, where 50,000–70,000 workers and nearly all the merchants went on strike. Under pressure from the popular masses, the Peking government was forced to dismiss the three officials who had compromised themselves most by their ties with the Japanese imperialists. The May Fourth Movement provided a strong impetus to the development of the working-class and national liberation movement in China and fostered the dissemination of Marxism throughout the country.

At the exact same moment both posed for pictures in front of the squares central sculpture, which commemorates the May Fourth movement, when Chinese students took to the streets to protest their country's ill treatment in the Treaty of Versailles, ending the first world war.

His notion of modern China begins with the Opium War of 18539-42 and ends with the May Fourth Movement of 1919, after which the Chinese Communist Party appears on the scene and history becomes "contemporary.

Student activists in the May Fourth Movement marched in the streets of Beijing and Shanghai in the thousands, with merchants and elites offering their moral support, in a massive show of popular anger that forced the Chinese government to refuse to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

These include Zhao Yannian's 1974-94 woodcut illustrations for novels by Lu Xun, a key figure of the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement, and the work of the self-taught abstract painter and poet Tang Chang, considered an outsider artist by his fellow Thai.

10) In this work Ling argues that Christianity has an important place in the intellectual history of the May Fourth movement, even though the impact of Christianity has been obscured by the Communist victory of 1949.

The visit of Bertrand Russell to China during 1920 to 1921 was one of the most significant events in May Fourth Movement, and Russell pointed out that education was the most important thing for Chinese reconstruction.

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